Global Tour|I am in Myanmar - Mandalay
I was surprised and said, I think you are quite liberal, why don't you seem to have a good impression of her, and the other 10% don't support why?
01
Westernized Burmese Chinese Xiao Ke
In Mandalay, I met a Chinese Xiao Ke who grew up in a wealthy Chinese family in Mandalay. Originally from Fujian, he is a fourth-generation Chinese here, and he says his great-grandfather's generation settled in Mandalay.
I asked him, Fujian people are mainly concentrated in Lower Burma (Yangon), and Upper Burma (Mandalay) should not be more Yunnanese.
He said that yes, the Chinese in Mandalay are mainly Yunnanese, more than 90% of them are Yunnanese, and Fujianese are an absolute minority.
Xiao Ke, who speaks fluent American English, told me that he has a Chinese name (surnamed Huang) but is more used to being called by his English name, and that he had attended college in New York for four years and interned for a year before returning to Myanmar and spending a total of five years in the United States.
I asked, why doesn't he know Chinese?
He shrugged, Hokkien dialect is far from Mandarin, unlike Yunnan dialect, which is basically the same as Mandarin, so Chinese people from Yunnan are very easy to learn.
I asked him, so do you speak Hokkien?
He said that he would listen, and that his elders spoke Hokkien at home, but his mother tongue was Burmese.
I asked him, don't you know a little Chinese?
He said "Hello", "Thank you", "Goodbye......
I said, did you learn Chinese when you were a child?
He said he had learned it at a very young age, but then he forgot about it.
(In Myanmar cities, especially the Chinese of Fujian nationality in Guangdong, the Chinese born after 2000 basically do not speak Mandarin and switch to Burmese as their mother tongue)
Xiao Ke has "Korean-style" curly hair.
He said that Korean pop culture is very popular in Myanmar, and is it the same in China?
I said, no, China and South Korea had a military problem (THAAD missiles) one year, and then China's Korean Wave became weaker and weaker, and now it is estimated that only 10% of Chinese young people are Ha Han, right? That incident had been over 50% before.
Xiao Ke's ABC ("Westernized" Chinese with knives and forks) sample is too rare, and I gradually groped for sensitive areas~
I asked, who is the most famous person in Myanmar?
He said, BTS or black pink?
I said, no, it's Aung San Suu Kyi.
He "poof~" and said with a very disdainful look that she was a politician, not a star.
I asked, what's wrong, it looks like you don't like her. (I was surprised because he was very Westernized and I thought she was the most staunch supporter of Aung San Suu Kyi).
He hesitated for a moment and said, how to say, don't you hate it......
Isn't Aung San Suu Kyi's first choice, I ask?
He paused and said, yes.
I asked, are you 100% behind her?
He thought for a moment and said, 90%.
I was surprised and said, I think you are quite liberal, why don't you seem to have a good impression of her, and the other 10% don't support why?
He asked me, do you know the Rohingya?
I said, "Yes."
He said that Aung San Suu Kyi's persecution of the Rohingya violates the world's human rights doctrine. (After chatting for a long time, I realized that he disliked Aung San Suu Kyi and was not liberal enough)
I said, but it seems that 90% of the people in Myanmar support her behavior~
However, not all Rohingya are bad, he said.
I said, I agree, but in the Rohingya region, there are a lot of separatists, and they have a lot of conflicts with Buddhists.
Nor could it be a reason for them to expel the Rohingya, he said.
I said, what do you think should be done with so many refugees? He said that China can try to accept part of it, and the Chinese are very tolerant of the Rohingya, and I think they will live better and safer in China.
I was silent for 10 seconds and said, my personal suggestion is Germany, Germany's economic level, whether China is a developing country, and the quality of life of Rohingya refugees living in China is not too high.
02
The most exclusive restaurant in Mandalay
Tonight I went to dinner with Xiao Ke, we went to Mandalay's most Western-style restaurant to eat, originally he asked me what to eat?
I said I would definitely eat Burmese specialties and he said the restaurants were not clean.
Then he took me to a western restaurant with a knife and fork.
Don't look at this kind of restaurant in the United States, it is only a chain restaurant, and the restaurants on the road in Myanmar are all food stall level, and it is difficult to encounter such a high-end decoration.
I ordered lobster pasta, which was very delicious, but it was the first time I had spicy pasta (a fusion of Burmese flavors), and the total cost was 83,000 kyats for two people, about 160 yuan.
03
The Rohingya have a very high fertility rate, and girls have to be dragged out by their parents to marry when they menstruate
In the past few days, I have talked to many Burmese people about the Rohingya, because Myanmar has carried out several "mass expulsions" of the Rohingya.
Most recently, in 2017, 700,000 of the 1.2 million Rohingya in Myanmar were forced to flee the country.
My Burmese friend Nairn, on the other hand, is deeply concerned about the Rohingya's problems.
I asked him why he was still worried. 700,000 of the 1.2 million people have been evicted in 2017.
You don't know, Nairn said, the Rohingya are like cockroaches and are very reproductive. They have a custom that after their daughter's first visit to her aunt (about 13 years old), the parents immediately start preparing for their daughter's wedding, and then start giving birth, and the Rohingya not only marry early, but also give birth to more, and the remaining 500,000 will soon become back to 1.2 million!
I didn't believe it, so I checked with my Rohingya friends.
Isn't it normal for my Rohingya friend to have a "deserved" tone? We're all like that there, it's our culture.
I said, but if a woman gets married before the age of 18, it should be against the law of Myanmar, right?
He said that the law of Myanmar is the law of Myanmar, but we are MSL, which is different.
Muhammad's third wife was engaged at the age of 6 and married Muhammad at the age of 9. (What is the law of Myanmar is the law of Myanmar, but we are MSL)